1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to networks and, more particularly, to storing data collected for a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Network management systems (NMS) often collect, store, process and report on performance and historical data over time for various devices in a network. In a network with hundreds or thousands of devices, the number of data objects results to collect can easily reach into the 100's of thousands. Thus, one challenge for an NMS is to store a large amount of object results collected every poll interval. For example, if the NMS polled 100,000 objects every 5 minutes and stored the result of each object, the NMS would have to store 28,800,000 records each day, placing a load on NMS resources (e.g., CPU and disk), as well as increasing input/output wait times.
One approach to overcoming the problem of storing such vast amounts of object results involves limiting the polling frequency. Another approach involves implementing dependant complex logic into the polling applications. However, both of these approaches put restrictions on the types of data that may be collected and stored within the NMS, which may result in delayed responses and gaps in the data collected.
As the foregoing illustrates, what is needed in the art is an improved technique for storing data collected from devices in a network.